Given the increasing use of cloud-hosted systems to control operational technology, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has recently published guidance in this area to assist organisations to risk assess and protect these systems.
Operational technology can be defined as technology which interfaces with the physical world and includes Industrial Control Systems (ICS), Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and Distributed Control Systems (DCS). Such systems are increasingly being targeted by threat actors due to the potential for immediate and devasting consequences following a successful cyber-attack.
Areas covered by the guidance include:
- Introduction to ‘cloud-hosted SCADA’
- Threat to SCADA
- Gaining flexibility
- Resilience and scalability
- Remote access improvements
- Centralising authentication, secrets, and key management
- Do you have access to cloud expertise?
- Have you considered the policies and processes required?
- Have you considered the impact of shared services?
- Software suitability for the cloud
- Legacy hardware solutions and hybrid connectivity
- Latency
- Data sensitivity
It is recommended that organisations with operational technology review their cyber risk management arrangements against this new guidance which is available here.
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Whilst care has been taken in the production of this article and the information contained within it has been obtained from sources that Griffiths & Armour, an Aon company believes to be reliable, Griffiths & Armour, an Aon company does not warrant, represent or guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, completeness or fitness for any purpose of the article or any part of it and can accept no liability for any loss incurred in any way whatsoever by any person who may rely on it. In any case any recipient shall be entirely responsible for the use to which it puts this article.This article has been compiled using information available to us up to 16 May 2024
